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I have salary income and I have various businesses. I have a wide assortment of write-offs and deductions of my income, and I usually have a lot of business expenses.

You do not have to report a negative income. Rather your AGI needs to be kept low.

Consider 2010 IRS deductions

Standard Deductions for 2010
Married Joint = 11,400

personal exemptions = 3,560
for a couple = 7,120

For a married couple 11,400 + 7,120 = 18,520

For a married couple the first $18,520 you earn is tax-free. Because when you go to filing your taxes it will not be taxed.

You only need to itemize your expenses above and beyond that $18,520

The IRS offers free courses to teach people how to do tax filing, called 'VITA'. IRS auditors are the instructors. After 1-week of classroom training you volunteer to help others for 10 hours minimum.

We itemize our taxes, and we keep the taxable portion of our income ZERO or below.

That does not mean that we were ever low income.

Just a point of clarification. The couple described would itemize if their itemized deductions exceeded the standard deduction amount of 11,400, not the standard deduction plus personal and dependency exemptions.

Originally Posted by Supposn:
Bob TN, aside from early withdrawals of 401K funds, the named exemptions from FICA taxation you listed do not seem unreasonable or proportionally significant.

Deducted funds diverted to FlexMed are the similar to health insurance expenses; if the employees and their families donít use the available services, their cost to the employee is no less income they have not received and could not spend.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobtn

I would maintain the employee exemption portion of them, not the employer.

Bob TN, I consider your suggestion to be logical and reasonable but the USA Congress is subject to influential political fund contributions.
Employers are opposed to the change; who would be motivated to support this modification of the FICA regulations and now contributes or would contribute to political funding to advance the change?

That's a fee. It's equivalent to saying that transportation is a regressive tax because everyone (who uses it) pays exactly the same fare (unless a student, elderly, disabled, or some other special class) regardless of their ability to pay.

A license plate fee is no more a regressive tax than a bus fare is a regressive tax. Sales taxes are, by some, considered regressive since elasticity of people with less money spend more of their income on things subject to sales tax than people with higher income do.

Absolutely untrue for two reasons. A "fee" is a cost to a user or consumer, to defray the expense of providing a desired benefit. The driver gains absolutely no benefit from being forced to license a car, and the cost to the state of issuing the plates and recording the names of the owners is only a tiny fraction of the "fee" assessed, which in some states is well over a hundred dollars per name entered into a computer.

Just because government pranksters call a tax a "fee" doesn't make it one.

Just because government pranksters call a tax a "fee" doesn't make it one.

True.

But that's irrelevant in this case as it's a fee so it's the government "pranksters" calling a fee a fee, which still makes it a fee. Of course, you yourself call it a fee as well so it's just really confusing. Everyone seems to agree that it's a fee, so I don't know why you're even posting about government pranksters. Maybe if you could give an example of these fees that are really taxes that would help since it obviously isn't vehicle registration fees since you yourself call those fees.

Submariner, your post is generally correct. Using a standard deduction for the taxable year of 2013, married couples with no other dependents can generally enjoy tax free adjusted gross incomes of $20,000.

Regardless of the method used to calculate deductions from individuals'
adjusted gross incomes, the tax credits and the following items may reduce adjusted gross incomes even if the individual chooses to use the standard deduction.

On the 1040 individualís income tax form for 2013, thereís a $3,900 exemption per tax filers and their dependents; thereís also a list of 13 items that a tax filer that a tax filer may employ to reduce their adjusted gross incomes. That $3,900 per capita and those 13 items can reduce AGI somewhat regardless of what other method the tax filers use to further reduce their AGI.

Tax filers employ the standard deduction or the itemized method to further reduce their AGIís; those two methods are mutually exclusive. Tax filers choosing to itemize cannot also further reduce their AGIs by evoking the standard deduction which is $6,100 per tax filers for most filers.

This list of items that can reduce adjusted gross incomes even if the taxpayers choose to use the standard deduction was excerpted from IRS form 1040 for the taxable year of 2013.

[A married couple must both use the same (i.e. standard or itemizing) method
of deductions from adjusted gross incomes. I do not know but suppose that
legally separated married couples may, and otherwise separated couple may
not use different deduction methods when filing separately].

Respectfully, Supposn

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